Loving What Is Book Review

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Loving What Is by Byron Katie* boldly claims to be a life changing book. The good news is that sometimes bold claims are based on reality.

A little more than twenty years ago, Katie, out of her own struggles with rage and depression, discovered what she terms “The Work” which not only turned her life around but many, many others’ since. “The Work” is in essence a ‘method of inquiry’. Deceptively simple, this method is basically comprised of 4 questions and what is referred to as ‘the turnaround’.**

Katie’s book details how to interpret and respond to the questions and the ‘turnaround’ sharing her own insights as well as countless examples of other people’s experiences with “The Work”. Reading about other people’s experience with this method help to make the book not only fascinating, but a relatively quick read.

From judgments about your “neighbor” (substitute spouse, child, friend, boss, etc.) to judgments about yourself this author illustrates how to help these stress-producing thoughts to “let go” of you rather than having you try to let go of them.

Also included are ways to identify and address subtle underlying beliefs, which often affects a person’s ability to accept and embrace reality. Even quite difficult issues such as addiction, anxiety and fear of terrorism are shown to be transformed through doing “The Work”.

If this review in itself is not enough motivation to pick up Loving What Is, perhaps curiosity about how changing your life could be so simple as 4 questions and a ‘turnaround’ will.

﻿The following article is based on the book Loving What Is by Byron Katie:

Meeting Your Thoughts with Understanding

Byron Katie believes that meeting thoughts with understanding can change the world. That process will likely begin with your experience of changing your own world. “The Work” is the ‘how’ of how this happens.

Katie defines herself as a lover of “what is”. She came to this position when she realized “it hurts when I argue with reality”. Hence, she begins her method of inquiry with calling into question the truth of our perception of reality. We all walk around with beliefs, some verbalized and many underlying. When those beliefs that create stress in our lives are examined with the simple question of “is it true?” we begin to separate opinion from fact.

Example: you are sure that the reason you haven’t heard from a friend is because she/ doesn’t value the relationship as much as you. You sit in the misery of this for days, and then learn from another that this particular friend had ended up in the ER. Was the misery you felt real? Yes. Was the basis for it real? No. Questioning the reality of our beliefs can lead to a different, stress free response.

I often see clients who cannot only recite the specific action that their spouse (coworker etc.) committed to injure them, but the sinister motive behind that action. (It is quite human somehow to associate others’ hurtful behavior with malice intent.) They end up holding that other person not only responsible for their action, but for their perceived negative motive behind it. Arguments often begin over whose reality is the accurate one. Determining for yourself how true your perception of reality is bypasses not only arguments but also the stress associated with the event.

Katie states that we all tell ourselves ‘stories’ to explain not only what is happening in our lives now but also what has happened in the past. We do this in part to help us make sense of our lives and our world. It is truly a disservice, however, when those stories create for us a world where we have little power and feel many difficult emotions around the actions of others. It is possible that by changing these stories we can also change how we feel about our world and ourselves. Katie believes that our stories and reality never match. The good news, she goes on, is that reality is always kinder. Clearly seeing the kindness of reality allows us to respond in the kindest, most appropriate and most effective way. Changing our actions to responses like that would have to result in a different world for all of us.

"Questioning the reality of our beliefs can lead to a different, stress free response."